Russian hackers flooded a small Texas town with its own water supply

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Is it a psyop or are the Russian bois upping their game? I dunno, but the nice folks in Muleshoe, Texas aren’t too happy about whatever it is:

A hack that caused a small Texas town’s water system to overflow in January has been linked to a shadowy Russian hacktivist group, the latest case of a U.S. public utility becoming a target of foreign cyberattacks. …

In Muleshoe … with a population of about 5,000, hackers caused the water system to overflow before it was shut down and taken over manually by officials, city manager Ramon Sanchez told CNN.

Two other area towns were also targeted in the attack, though the Muleshoe facility was the only one compromised.

So what exactly happened in Muleshoe? Per CNN:

[T}he hackers broke into a remote login system for industrial software that allows operators to interact with a water tank, city manager Ramon Sanchez told CNN. The water tank overflowed for about 30 to 45 minutes before Muleshoe officials took the hacked industrial machine offline and switched to manual operations…

Muleshoe officials “replaced the hacked software system and took other steps to secure the network” after the attack.

Thankfully, “the city’s water disinfectant system was not affected, and the public water system nor the public was in any danger.” But the incident shows just how vulnerable critical U.S. infrastructure is to malignant agents:

At least one of the attacks was linked this week by Mandiant, a U.S. cybersecurity firm, to a shadowy Russian hacktivist group [called CyberArmyofRussia_Reborn] that it said could be working with or part of a Russian military hacking unit.

The CyberArmy of Russia group “was among groups suspected of Russian government ties that engaged last year in low-complexity attacks against Ukraine and its allies, including denial-of-service data barrages that temporarily knock websites offline.”

This might be a good time to emphasize the importance of basic but critical security measures such as air gaps:

An air gap is a security measure that involves isolating a computer or network and preventing it from establishing an external connection. An air-gapped computer is physically segregated and incapable of connecting wirelessly or physically with other computers or network devices.